The Sun Herald reports from Florida. "When the music stopped in the residential-real-estate market, speculators who got caught with unsold houses and condos began putting them on the market as rentals. 'I see a lot of houses that people can't sell that are going onto the market as rentals, but they are having trouble renting them,' said Dan Collins, of Collins Management and Realty."

"Collins says he has eight homes for rent and' while that may not sound like many' he normally has no rental units available."

"Lorraine Matthews, property manager for Coldwell Banker/Sunstar Reality, said she is seeing 'brand new homes available as (sales) prices have gone down from a year ago.'"

"Matthews said the agency has about 400 rentals from Charlotte County and Englewood to North Port. In 2003 and 2004, at the height of North Port's building boom, when 8,000 new homes went up, finding a rental was nearly impossible. As construction has slowed, however, that has changed."

"Richard Campo, CEO of Camden Property Trust, said Camden is recruiting failed homeowners to rent its apartments. 'They're pretty good renters,' he says of foreclosed-upon homeowners. 'But they didn't realize what the total cost of ownership really meant. We are marketing to those people as long as they have reasonable credit minus the foreclosure,' he says."

From WESH Orlando. "The mortgage crisis that's gripped the nation has hit especially hard here in Central Florida. One of every five homes in Flagler County is for sale. Celebration is feeling the same pain because 50 percent of the homes there are for sale."

"In Moss Park, east of Orlando International, nearly 9 percent of the homes are in foreclosure, 8 percent in the ZIP code west of Palm Bay and 7 percent in Poinciana."

"In fact, the most homes in foreclosure are in ZIP codes that didn't exist five years ago."

"So how did so many people end up in this fix? 'They didn't really look at the quality of the people who could afford to pay the loans,' Randy Martin of the Orlando Association of Realtors said."

"Mortgage brokers signed people up for the biggest, fanciest house possible, offering low rates to buyers didn't truly understand. 'I've had clients come in and I've told them that they had an adjustable rate mortgage because I read their mortgage to them. They had no idea,' lawyer Rosalyn Dunlap said."

"'A perfect storm is probably a pretty good analogy,' Randy Martin said."

"New home inventories have stacked up. Desperate sellers have dropped prices to move them, flooding the market with homes. If no new houses were added to the Central Florida market, it would take 22 months to sell all of them. There is currently one buyer for every 16 houses."

"Last year at this time, the region was averaging seven to eight foreclosures a day. Martin said Central Florida is now up to 50 a day."

From CBS 4. "Foreclosures are up, and home sales are down. Almost everyone knows this in South Florida, but industry experts in the area say this is the worst they have ever seen."

"'In 2006 we had about 6,600. In 2007 so far this year we've had about 13-thousand,' said Broward County Clerk of Courts operations manager Barbara Brown."

"'There are lenders out there with programs to assist you,' said John Byrne, with Coldwell Banker. 'You may not keep your home, but it may not be taken away in a manner that is abrupt to your life.'"

"And once these homes go on the auction block, they're not selling there either. 90 homes for sale today and all of them went back to the lender."

The Palm Beach Post. "In Palm Beach County, lenders foreclosed on 1,196 homes last month, up from 509 in September 2006, according to the county clerk's office."

"In Martin County, 65 homeowners got foreclosure notices in September, up from just 29 a year ago, according to the county clerk's office. In land-rich St. Lucie County, home to the one-time fastest-growing city in America, Port St. Lucie, and a hotbed of investor activity during the five-year real estate boom, foreclosures more than tripled, the clerk's office said."

"'When home values were growing faster than kudzu, said Jim Sahnger of Palm Beach Financial Network, said he knew of local homeowners who refinanced their house every 12 months. The house, originally valued at $300,000, soared to $900,000 at the peak of appreciation - and then came crashing back down, Sahnger said."

"'People who were surviving off serial refinancing are stuck now,' he said. 'They had the opportunity to dip back into the pool and it gave them liquidity, but now there's no liquidity left.'"

"Sahnger said the home is for sale with an asking price near its value during the peak of the market. 'When Realtors tell them they need to lower their prices, they say, 'You're being negative.'"

The St Petersburg Times. "For the better part of two years, Trump Tower Tampa developers have promised that a financing deal was just around the corner. Now, at the 11th hour,developer SimDag LLC is telling potential buyers it may have found a willing lender."

"'Those boys, they always say there's hope around the corner. I give them credit for being optimistic,' said Tom Long, a Tampa attorney representing two Trump buyers trying to recover their 20 percent deposit on a $1.5-million condo."

"Long expressed hope that SimDag would get its loan, if only so his clients can get their deposit back. But he's skeptical he'll ever see a Trump Tower at 111 S Ashley Drive. 'A lender is going to want a pound of flesh in this environment,' Long said."

The Herald Tribune. "After putting off buying a new car for a year, Jean and Don Fowler decided to use a cash "windfall" from Don's job to buy the vehicle they wanted."

"Jean Fowler was struck by the fact that 'the dealership was like a ghost town.' They were the only customers on a Thursday afternoon in September: 'I have never been in a place where the salesmen outnumber the customers,' she said."

"Customers in showrooms have been on the decline across Southwest Florida, mimicking the declining fortunes of the region's housing market. That is no coincidence. Homeowners who have watched the value of their homes plummet are feeling much less inclined to make a big purchase like a car. People who had hoped to tap the shrinking equity in their houses are unable to."

"New car sales fell 7 percent last year in Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte counties, and, as of July, were on track to fall 12.5 percent in 2007."

"'Housing is a big issue here in Florida and in California and it's affecting our sales,' said Marc Cannon, a vice president with Fort Lauderdale-based AutoNation Inc. 'Industry retail sales this year are off about 8 percent.'"

"The shaken consumer confidence that so intimately governs car purchases is not likely to rebound any time soon, said Jesse Toprak, director of industry analysis at the car-buying Web site Edmunds.com. 'The only thing automakers can do in the short term is to make the deals better,' Toprak said. 'They can't generate an artificial feeling of confidence.'"

"'It's not really because people can't afford to buy,' Toprak said. 'If your house just lost 10 percent in its value, you're not in the mood to go out and buy a new car. The housing market went up so fast, it was easier to justify the purchase and now you have the reverse situation.'"

"The Fowlers shopped around for a good deal and got one. The financing from GM was not a zero-percent-interest deal like those offered a few years ago, but the couple said they did not need it anyway. 'We thought we got a really good deal,' Jean Fowler said."

The News Press. "Mortgage foreclosures in Lee County remained at a near record level, even as some people started to reap the benefits as banks put foreclosed houses back on the market."

"A total of 1,220 foreclosures were filed, compared to 1,232 in August. The number of single-family homes on the list increased from 791 to 915."

"A lot of the properties being taken back by the banks are houses that are new or nearly so, built as investments in the heat of the housing boom of 2005 and 2006 but abandoned by their owners when prices plunged."

"Some of those are now finding their way to families who are finally able to afford a home of their own."

"Riverside president John Moran said the bank is selling the homes directly instead of turning them over to a real estate agent as it had previously."

"'My wife and I started looking when the market started cooling off,' said Ron Temple. Recently he heard about a program by Riverside Bank of the Islands to sell homes taken back in foreclosure, and now they're under contract to buy their first home in Lehigh Acres for $198,000 — $10,000 under appraised value and more space than they'd dreamed of having. 'I keep pinching myself,' said Temple."

"The four-bedroom, three-bath house they're buying in Cape Coral is ideal for them and their two children living at home but would have been out of their range at more than $300,000 two years ago."

"'We're actually going to be paying less monthly than we were paying in rent,' Ferguson said."

"About six of the houses are under contract now, Moran said. 'It's a painful answer for a lot of the banks but it's still getting people into homes they never thought it was possible to get into.'"

"Moran said he's trying to adjust to the unfamiliar business of selling houses for less than they were worth a year or two ago. 'For nine years we never took a loss on a residential piece of property, never,' he said. 'We're not in the business to sell real estate.'"